


Locard's Principle

by Monocytogenes



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Awkward Romance, Dating, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-12 23:35:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3359456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Monocytogenes/pseuds/Monocytogenes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Even the smallest touch can be meaningful."</p><p>When Eddie has a terrible day, Kristen reluctantly steps in to comfort him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Locard's Principle

When five o’ clock rolls around, Gotham’s streets clogging with rush hour traffic, Eddie is on his sixth call of the day, shivering from the chill coming in off the river.

He’s grateful for the cold insofar as it keeps his mind alert—he can feel the exhaustion creeping up on him in earnest, his back aching from bending over and arm throbbing from the weight of the kit he has in tow. He can tell this case is a bad one by the number of officers milling about, and he gives a wide berth to three of them coming up the gravel path, dragging along two rough-looking men in handcuffs. The scene itself is flanked by two cars casting spotlights through the gathering gloom, ribbons of yellow tape stretched between them, and he holds the tape up to duck beneath, looking for someone he knows well.

He finds one of his fellow technicians standing by a stain in the dirt, snapping photographs, and sidles up behind her. “Hi, Ellen.”

She inhales sharply, startled, and cranes her neck to regard him. “Jesus, Ed. Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Never mind.” She huffs a sigh. “Did you just get here?”

“Yep. What can I do?”

“We need someone to take casts of the footprints by the bodies. You got dental stone with you?”

“Of course. Who has the log?”

“Dennis. He’s—” She’s saved from hunting for the officer in question as he walks up, clipboard in hand, and demands that Eddie sign in. Eddie writes his name neatly, checking his watch to record the time, then makes his way towards the edge of the water.

The bodies are freshly dead, not yet frozen in rigor mortis, sprawled with open eyes a few yards from the lapping waves. They’re two middle-aged men clad in suits, one of them still clutching a revolver, and between the peppering of bullet wounds and the signs of struggle Eddie immediately recognizes it as a mob hit. He sets his kit down on an untouched patch of soil, snapping on his gloves and donning a headlamp before crouching by one of the prints.

“Beautiful,” he remarks, tilting his head to admire its clarity. “Just beautiful.”

He grabs a can of shellac and sprays down the impression, then sets up a metal frame around it, and is pouring the stone when a commotion grabs his attention. There’s shouts from just beyond the spotlights—harsh words that quickly drop to a low argument. He spots Dennis making his way over, and returns to his pouring, figuring that he’ll handle the situation.

Then, about five minutes later, they tear down the police tape.

Eddie stands up in alarm. Another officer begins to approach him, his face unreadable, and there’s something in his stride that makes Eddie rush towards him, raising his palms.

“You can’t come back here,” Eddie insists. “I’m still processing the scene.”

“You’re done. Captain wants everybody out.”

Eddie gapes at him. “I don’t think you understand. This cast takes at least twenty minutes to set.”

“Forget it. We’re moving out.”

The officer tries to step past him, but Eddie presses his hands against his chest. “I can’t forget it! It’s evidence!”

“Get out of my way.”

He grabs Eddie by the arm and tugs him aside. He’s about two steps closer to the bodies, the toe of his shoe connecting with the edge of another print, when something snaps within Eddie—something that had been winding loose since this morning, when a beat cop had carelessly touched the dumpster they’d found human remains in. Or perhaps it had begun earlier than that, back when he’d discovered that the ME hadn’t ordered an alkali screen for a woman that had most likely been given an overdose of sleeping pills. He knows why this must be happening, considering what sort of crime this is, but before he realizes what he’s doing his fist connects with the officer’s jaw.

The man is left stunned for a moment, and then he chuckles, calling out to another cop nearby. “Hey Tom, Nygma just hit me!”

“Are you kidding?” Tom responds.

“You contaminated the evidence,” says Eddie, hollowly.

The officer gives a smirk, grimacing a bit around the smarting skin, and then takes Eddie by the shoulders, throwing him to the ground. Eddie knocks over the jug of stone as he falls, getting it on his jacket and pants as he scrambles up. Tom and the officer laugh raucously.

Eddie starts for them, but Dennis’ voice cuts in. “What’s going on here?”

“Nothing,” the officer says. “Just trying to tell Nygma it’s time to go.”

“Yeah, Nygma.” Dennis sighs. “Something came up. You know how it is.”

“It’s not right.” Eddie’s voice trembles. “It’s disingenuous. You know that.”

He looks past Dennis, back to where Ellen was working, but she’s already gone. Dennis shakes his head.

“Sorry. Go pack up.”

 

*

 

He’d hoped Kristen had already left.

When he steps into the station, shivering again at the sudden warmth, he can feel the stares on him—or, rather, on the grayish, powdery stains. He’d tried his best to wipe them off, even considering stopping somewhere with a bathroom to rinse off his clothes, but it’s cold and he’s exhausted and done playing around. He wants nothing more than to drop off his supplies as fast as possible, head home and curl up with the leftovers in his fridge.

Kristen normally is gone by five thirty on a Thursday, but as he trudges to the lab he meets her in the hallway, her green eyes flickering over his frame.

“What happened to you?”

“It’s—it’s nothing of importance. I spilled some dental stone while casting an impression.” He swallows hard and tries to force a smile.

“Oh.” She pauses, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. “Well, I pulled the autopsy report for the Summers case for you. I’m taking off now but you can pick it up tomorrow.”

“Thank you.” He looks at the floor. “Though it doesn’t really make a difference.”

“What? Why?”

“I don’t think people care. They’re scared of the mob or lazy or incompetent and they don’t care about the truth.” His throat tightens and he swallows again. “They don’t appreciate the power of evidence. I do all this work and it doesn’t matter.”

“Mr. Nygma—”

“Sometimes I just want to—” He clenches the fist that isn’t holding the kit, hard enough that his fingernails dig into his skin, and then his breath hitches. Immediately, he feels shame wash over him, and he turns to walk away, not wanting Kristen to see him upset.

Her hand catches his sleeve. He stops, sniffling.

“It’s alright,” she soothes. “Was someone mean to you again?”

Eddie gives a slow nod. Kristen sighs.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I thought you were about to leave,” he mutters.

“I was, but…” She trails off, and is quiet for long enough that Eddie looks back at her in spite of his damp cheeks.

“But what?” he asks.

“You know—screw it.” She gives a fluttery little shake of her head. “How about we go get dinner somewhere?”

Eddie raises his eyebrows. “You and me?”

“Yes, you and me.”

“You mean a dinner date?” Eddie’s expression breaks into a smile.

“No, no, I mean—” His face falls, and she hastily backtracks. “I guess you can call it what you’d like. I’m trying to do something nice for you.”

“But you do want to go out with me. To dinner.”

Kristen opens her mouth, thinks better of what she was about to say, and tells him, “Yes.”

“Where do you want to go?” he asks, switching the kit from one hand to the other to rest his arm. “I like lots of different kinds of food. There’s a really great Mexican place down the road from here, or we could do the Chinese restaurant on Fifth, or if you want something fancier we can go to Lombardi’s. I can pay, too, if you’d prefer. I just need to—”

She raises a hand to cut him off. “I was thinking about Lindsey’s. The diner two blocks from here.”

“Oh yes, I know where that is. Should we catch the bus? Or do you want to walk?”

“It’s two blocks, Mr. Nygma. I think we can walk.”

“Right.” He grins at his own silliness, then glances down at his clothes. “Well I—let me do something about this and then I’ll be ready to go.”

“I’ll be waiting by the front,” she says, and he walks off, glancing back at her at intervals and giggling happily to himself.

 

 

*

 

 

It’s not a terribly romantic setting, Eddie has to admit. The laminate table is scratched, the tile floors are grimy, and he doesn’t want to think about what might be growing in the sticky residue coating the condiments. There’s quite a few customers at this hour, though, and between that observation and Kristen’s preference for the place he figures the food must be good.

They order drinks—a coffee for him, an iced tea for her—and at her prodding he recounts what happened at the river, going glum again at the memory. Kristen rests her chin in her hand, rolling her eyes.

“I find it maddening too,” she says. “The corruption. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve given someone a file and had it returned with pages removed or information scratched out. And no matter how much I complain, nobody will admit to doing it.”

Eddie rolls a packet of sugar uneasily between his fingers. “They don’t doctor my work, do they?”

“It’s hard to say. They probably have. I tend not to look too closely at the gruesome details.”

“The nerve of them.” The corner of his mouth twitches, and he rips open the packet, dumping its contents into his cup. “They can’t just—can’t pick and choose and decide how things should come out. Evidence is evidence. Discarding any piece of the puzzle—that’s _insulting.”_

“That’s the GCPD.” Kristen gives a helpless shrug. “It’s not going to change.”

Eddie starts to respond, to insist that it has to, but he’s interrupted by the waitress coming to take his order. He peruses his options quickly and decides to get a hot dog, telling her not to put any onions on it. As Kristen asks for a plate of eggs and bacon, Eddie grimaces at the slightly greasy texture of the menus and inquires, “When were these last washed? _E. coli_ can persist on a surface like this for up to twenty-four hours.”

The waitress blinks, confesses that she doesn’t know and promises to wipe them down.

“Mr. Nygma, please,” Kristen chides once she’s out of earshot.

“What? It’s true. I could demonstrate the bacterial load to you but I don’t have any swabs with me to take samples.” His gaze drops to her drink. “The average person doesn’t wash their hands very well at all. Oftentimes lemon wedges like that end up contaminated with fecal coliforms from the restaurant workers.”

Kristen quickly plucks the wedge off the side of her glass. “That is so disgusting. Why would you even tell me that?”

“I think it’s a good thing to know.” He reaches into the pocket of his slacks, pulling out a small bottle and offering it to her. “Hand sanitizer?”

She snatches it from him, rubbing the gel over her fingers. “You’re going to ruin my appetite.”

“The food will probably be okay. It could theoretically contain some pathogens from people talking and breathing over it but if you’re immunocompetent then it shouldn’t matter.” He takes the bottle back, giving his hands a dousing too.

“How comforting. Could we not talk about germs? Or anything else gross?”

“What would you define as ‘gross?’”

“Anything involving dead bodies, like that nice long story you told me the other day about the way the blood pools.”

“Livor mortis,” Eddie says with a smile.

“Yes. Let’s not discuss that.”

“You listened to me talk about bodies a few minutes ago.”

“Because I thought you’d feel better if you had the chance to talk about what happened to you.” She lifts her straw to her lips and sips her drink, grimacing slightly at the notion that it might be contaminated. “Normal people find that stuff disgusting. Why is that so hard for you to understand?”

“Police officers don’t usually react to forensic evidence with disgust,” he comments. “Though they do have a tendency to ignore me.”

“They see all kinds of horrible things on a daily basis. They’ve gotten used to it. I haven’t. Most people haven’t.”

“Well, I’ll be sure to take that into consideration in the future. I don’t try to disgust you, Ms. Kringle.”

“You do a lot of things you aren’t trying to do,” she mutters.

Eddie stares at his coffee. “Socializing is not my strong suit. Much less when the person in question is, uh—”

He gesticulates wordlessly with his hands. Kristen arches a brow.

“Is what? Female?”

“Beautiful.”

She takes a slow breath, smiles tightly, and teases, “Like a cupcake?”

“The cupcake wasn’t beautiful. The sweetness of it was an analogy to the positive emotions elicited by the sight of a beautiful woman,” he corrects.

“Of course.” She laughs, sounding strained. “God, why are you so weird?”

Eddie just regards her, uncertain how to answer that.

“I wish you weren’t,” she continues. “The other guys wouldn’t make fun of you so often. I wouldn’t have to feel bad for you, and I wouldn’t be so—”

Her hand reaches across the table, taking hold of his. He feels his heartbeat accelerate as her thumb strokes his skin, making a small half-circle over the ridges of his tendons.

“Never mind,” she says, but doesn’t let go.

Eddie thinks to turn his hand over to grip hers properly, but he’s frozen in place, entranced by the sight of her neatly trimmed nail and the tiny wrinkles at her knuckle. After a long moment, he declares, “Locard’s principle.”

“Huh?”

“Locard’s exchange principle. ‘Every contact leaves a trace.’ Whatever was on your finger could have passed to me—dead keratinocytes, skin flora, cells shed in the saliva that contacted your straw. Even the smallest touch can be meaningful.”

Kristen turns noticeably pink. At that moment, the waitress reappears, and Kristen jerks her hand back as their plates are set down. Eddie smiles at her as he takes a bite of his hot dog.

“You make me want to regret doing that,” she says, and for once in his life, Eddie realizes that he can read her in spite of her words.

“But you don’t.”

 

*

 

He takes her hand on the way back to the bus stop, slowing his pace to match her shorter stride. It’s fully dark now, the sidewalk illuminated by the gold glow of the sodium vapor lamps, the cold breeze swaying the trees planted along the curb. The streets are quieter than before, though a small cluster of people still wait beneath the overhang, talking on their phones or gazing dully towards the blinking traffic signals.

Kristen shivers. Eddie asks, “Would you like to wear my jacket?”

“I’m fine,” she insists. “But thank you.”

“You ride the 40, correct?”

“Yes. I live out in South Point.”

“I know where you live,” remarks Eddie, and when she side-eyes him, he explains, “I looked through your employment record while I was reorganizing your files.”

“Please tell me you haven’t been staking out my apartment.”

“I haven’t been there, no. I was just curious. My address is on file, too, if you ever wanted to look at it.”

“I’m sure it is.”

There’s silence between them for a few minutes, and Eddie’s surprised to find that it isn’t uncomfortable. Still holding her hand, he feels oddly light, as though he won’t have to face incomplete case files and bungled autopsy reports tomorrow. He glances at Kristen and she glances at him, her eyes a deep brown in the dimness, and he thinks that he could admire her for hours.

“Did you know that skin-to-skin contact stimulates oxytocin release?” he asks.

“I did not,” she says, rolling her eyes for, by his count, the fifth time this evening. “What does that do?”

“Promotes feelings of trust and empathy, among other things. Sometimes it’s referred to as the ‘bonding hormone.’”

“Is that what we’re doing? Bonding?”

“Physiologically. Are you opposed to that?”

“I suppose not,” she admits.

The sharp hiss of air brakes sounds nearby, and he looks over, spotting Kristen’s bus. When he turns to her again she smiles and starts to speak, and something imperceptible snaps within him again. Instead of anger, a reckless heat fills his senses, and he leans over to press his lips to hers.

Their noses bump, stopping him short. Kristen stares, shocked. The moment gone, his stomach turns with nervousness, and he starts to step away.

Her palm catches his cheek. “You have to tilt your head.”

She arches her neck, raises herself up on her toes and kisses him long and hard. As she pulls back, her chest heaves with quick breaths, as though she’d been running. He feels a blush spread from his cheeks to his ears.

“Guess I can teach you something too,” she declares, fumbling in her purse for her wallet, laughing a little at her own flustered state. “Good night, Mr. Nygma.”

“Good night, Ms. Kringle,” he says softly, and grins.

**Author's Note:**

> In case anyone's interested, here's a couple science notes:
> 
> \-- Locard's exchange principle is named after Edmund Locard, a police officer and professor that was working in Lyon in the early 1900s. There's a lovely iteration of it on its [wiki page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locard's_exchange_principle) that crops up a lot.  
> \-- Yes, when you're processing a crime scene, you have to sign a log. This is how they account for any prints, DNA, etc. that you might leave there.  
> \-- You can check out how to take a cast of a three-dimensional print [here.](http://www.crime-scene-investigator.net/footwear.html) For this and the above, I also consulted the incredibly helpful book _Forensics: A Guide for Writers_ by D.P. Lyle.  
>  \-- Eddie's remarks about restaurant cleanliness are gleaned from [this study](http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/23505769) and [this news story.](http://abcnews.go.com/Health/10-germiest-places-restaurant-hint-bathroom/story?id=17728078)  
> \-- Here's a [fun article about oxytocin.](http://io9.com/5925206/10-reasons-why-oxytocin-is-the-most-amazing-molecule-in-the-world)


End file.
